


Are You With Me?

by Mirdala



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Character Study, Drinking to Cope, Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, especially the battle worn, just mccree and his booze, kinda sure why not, mentions of character's deaths, tormented McCree, unnamed overwatch members because I couldn't decide, we all have bad days, who would show up to try to recruit Jesse, yelling at people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 06:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16080704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirdala/pseuds/Mirdala
Summary: Jesse didn't answer the Recall. Two are sent to recruit him. They walk in to a motel room, Jesse half a bottle in. They weren't expecting the answer they are given.





	Are You With Me?

“No.” It’s a whisper. Barely travelling pass the chapped lips forming the word. “No.” It’s louder, rougher. A snarl coming from lips drawn down in a grimace, teeth bared. “NO!” It’s a roar. Pained and raw. You slam your metal fist into the counter top you gripped with white knuckles. You turn your head, McCree, and you stare at the two standing across the room, heat rising in your gut with each second.

You walk towards them, the steps you take unsteady from the whiskey in your veins, lifting an accusatory finger. Despite the stiffness of the metal, the finger trembles in the air. “Don’t you dare.” Barrel chest angled forward, quaking. “Don’t you dare ask me this!” Your hair falls into your face. Greasy and over grown. Forgoing a shower to drink. You wipe the spit from the corner of your mouth, the edges of your untamed beard, with a roll your shoulder. Dampening the dirty, faded plaid shirt you wear.

“To go back!” You swing out your other hand, bottle tightly grasped by its neck. Whiskey sloshing inside in the more than half an empty bottle. Droplets landing on the toe of your boot. “To watch it all burn.” You’re back in Rome. You feel the debris peppering into your back from the blast. Running into the crumbling building, flames licking at your boots. The coffins draped in flags. Justice never served.

“Again!? Have you lost your goddamn minds?!” You were on the other side of planet when the headquarters exploded. Talon’s MO. You searched all the footage you could get your hands on. You hunted, calling in long owed favors, finding nothing. The sound of the explosion still haunts you, because you weren’t there.

“I never _asked_ for this!” You throw the bottle against the wall. It shatters. Shards flying around the room, trails of whiskey spinning into the air. The two messengers stand next to each other in the ratty motel room you decided to splurge on for once. Along with the top shelf whiskey now soaking into the carpet. No. You didn’t ask for any of this, Jesse McCree, when you were taken in from pursuing a career running guns and drugs. A punk, one of the countless forgotten in the aftermath of the war.

“No one can ask me this again.” Gabriel’s self-assured smirk, slides into your mind despite you shaking your head to keep it away. He sits across from you, your hands handcuffed to the table, so long ago. Impressed by your skill. Knowing you would be tried as an adult no matter how young you claim to be. Caged for the rest of your life. You said yes seeing a chance to maybe do some good. To make up for the lives you ruined. But this…suffering…you didn’t ask for this.

“ _No one_ asked for this.” You grind out between clenched teeth as you move in close, grabbing the front of the one nearest to you. You shake them, push them back with each step you take forward.

“Ana. Jack. Gabriel.” They look you straight in the eyes as you yell in their face. Fumes of whiskey rolling off you in waves. Stale cigar smoke mixing in your shallow and harsh breaths. The burning flames in your gut greedily taking the air to reignite an old ember. Their back thuds against the wall. They wrap a hand around your wrist. You press in even more. They must understand.

“Gerard. Singh. Mirembe.” You empty the last of you rage into calling out their ghosts. “They didn’t ask for this!” Each passing through the remains of your soul, hoisting the well of guilt closer to the surface with a jolt. “They are buried, six feet in the ground!” A pit of memories. You recoil back, a deep ache pulsing in your chest. Eyes seeing faces long gone. “You can’t ask this again.” Your hands drop, you retreat further away.

“No.” Lena. Angela. Fareeha. Reinhardt. Genji. Torbjörn. Brigitte. The last of your family. How could they do this? Dare to ask this. They were there. When the tension grew thick. As the infighting began. They carried and lowered the caskets. They folded the flags. They visited the graves.

Not a lesson learned.

Damn. It. All.

You hang your head, tears waiting to run down your face. “You can’t.” Shoulders dropped with memories heavier than your anger. Of you standing alone at a grave in Los Angeles. Dusty hand raising a flask to the headstone. A bitter toast to your mentor. Serape snapping in the wind. Pouring out a drink to the headstone before emptying the rest down your throat. “Bad shit will happen to the people you care about.” In Egypt. On your knees. Hat off, pressed into your chest. The words, I’m sorry, falling from your lips over and over and over. Wailing silently, curled forward in on yourself no longer able to contain the grief. “You understand?”  You couldn’t show your face or plant a boot on any of the official cemetery grounds. You never are afforded the opportunity to pay your respects. To grieve for those, you miss and lost.

 “You don’t want this...me.” Gesturing to yourself weakly. Hand dropping against your side like an anchor. No one _wants_ the one who walked away. “I suck at this.” A coward. Leaving them high and dry. An ingrate. Turning away from the second chance you were given. A disappointment. Failing to protect those who cared for you, selfishly thinking of only your survival. An outlaw on the run. Wanted for crimes you didn’t commit, none of the ones you did.

“I am fucked up.” Half starved. Ragged. Spiteful. You, you poor, poor excuse of a man. A hand gone. Knees shot to hell. Tattered. Scarred. Broken. Pitiful.

 “The world needs heroes.” They finally say. You shake, laughter bubbling up. Manic. Mirthless.

The world _always_ needs heroes.

The endless cycle of the self-righteous thinking they are justified in taking that first shot, that first step to sparking a battle, using the pain they feel like others had before them. They use that pain they hold tightly within them as the reason they take this singular step, all in the name to ensure no one will ever have to experience a pain like theirs. They think they know what they are asking for, prepared to fight. But they don’t know the toll, good intentions be damned. They don’t know the untold, the uncountable number of lives that will end, of families torn apart. The screams that will echo in their minds they close their eyes.

“Then what?” You blink, seeing them all clear as day their fresh faces, smiling, as yours had long ago. You see them breaking. As you had. Over endless fighting. Bone deep terror. Death constantly shadowing them. Crying out each other’s name.

You see their deaths.

On their backs with blood everywhere.

Shot.

Buried in rubble.

Limbs and bodies twisted. Unrecognizable.  

Pieces of them.

None of them.

Hearts in their hands.

Weeping.

“After you’ve won, after you’ve buried your friends and family. The people you love. Then what? You think that’s the end? You don’t want this future.” You plead. Voice quivering. Fists balled. For those yet having to experience the crushing loss of all hope. Of losing a given family. Of having to watch it tear itself apart from the inside. “This sufferin’.” Sobriety the only curse that can be managed. Peace for you only at the bottom of glass bottles. In the oblivion of nothingness, passed out on the bar counter. In the corner of an abandoned building. Between the cars of a train. In the dust of the desert against a rock. Lain out on the floor of a cheap motel bathroom. Silence sinks into the room. Your tirade over. Limbs heavy. Chest heaving. You drag a hand down your face. A cold sweat lacing your palm. The tremors persist.

“No. I won’t join you.” You lift your head. Standing before them. To show them the red lining your eyes, the dark shadows under them. A dull brown at the bottom of a well of tears. A hint of yellow in the whites of your eyes. Your scarred face. Inset lines in your skin telling the story of your lost battles. You present to them the embodiment of the torment they ask for so easily.

 “Now get the hell out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because war is hell. And to be asked to go back can be the worst thing a person hears after they have suffered so greatly.


End file.
